The Complete Guide to Feeding Your Baby

Although she will miss out on the abundance of antibodies and protein in your colostrum and breast milk, if you’ve opted to bottle feed your newborn from the very start, all baby formula has been manufactured to suit an infant’s needs. The milk used will have been highly processed in order to become more readily digestible by your infant, as well as fortified with the necessary vitamins and minerals.

Whether it be for medical reasons or financial reasons, some women cannot breastfeed their infant, and many feel guilty about missing out on the closeness involved in the practice. Thankfully, there are plenty of other ways to establish and nurture this close bond, even with bottle feeding.

Aside from medical and financial fears, there are some other view points to be had by pro-bottle mothers. Some of these, including possible solutions, are:

• The mother does not want to be bound by her child’s feeding schedule. They also fear that they will be unable to receive any sort of help with the feeding, or that the baby will refuse to be fed by another loved one, such as the father.

Experts say that if you introduce the bottle to a baby before 3 weeks of life (but only after the mother’s breast milk has come in well), it is very likely that it will accept both. You can have a loved one offer the infant a baby bottle once a day, perhaps even at a tough and tiring time such as the wee hours of the morning! Keep in mind that offering too much baby formula may result in a decrease of production in breast milk (because the mother’s body produces the milk depending on the baby’s needs), and yet waiting too long to offer the bottle may leave you with a “breast-only” baby.

• New parents may like the reassurance of bottle feeding because they can gauge how much their infant is eating.

There are ways to determine whether or not your baby is getting enough nourishment from breast milk. One of these would be whether or not your infant is urinating every four hours or so. You can also depend on your doctors measurements of your baby’s weight and growth. If everything is normal, you can rest assured that your child is getting enough milk.

• For many working mother’s, they feel breast feeding their baby will create a painful attachment on both sides and make the parting time (of work) a lot harder to bear. They also fear the baby might become too dependent and extremely fussy and unhappy in the absence of the mother.

Although the separation may be a little harder for some women, the closeness associated with breast feeding your baby will give you both a wonderful start. Coming home to breastfeed your child can be looked upon as a special time in the day and a jump-start to the closeness you both yearn, especially after an entire day away from each other.

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